5 Steps to Help a Sales Rep be an Effective Executive Within an Enterprise

In today’s hyper-connected, crazy-busy business world, the effective sales representative must also be an effective executive. The sales representative meets the test conditions of being an “executive” because he is in control of his time and his contributions have an effect on the performance of the enterprise. Good, or bad.

As the above Venn Diagram shows, the most effective sales executive operates in the “bullseye” area that caters to the needs of all parts of an organization. Today, perhaps more than any other time, the sales professional has in his hands at all times the tools necessary to accomplish this task. This tool, is either an iPad or iPhone.

5 Steps to Help a Sales Rep be an Effective Executive Within an Enterprise

Everyone in the organization depends on sales to deliver a revenue number. As a result, the effective sales executive accepts this responsibility and understand that a day wasted is an opportunity missed. A simple exercise that I like to use is to ask myself at the end of each day, “What did I contribute and from that what were the results?”

What’s also true is that in many cases, sales is the primary front-line of the enterprise. Because of this, sales reps are in the best position to discern and report changes in current trends to others within the enterprise. Communication is key.

Effectiveness can be learned. A great tool for this, the Feedback Log, was advocated by Peter Drucker back in the late 1960’s. The Feedback Log is used to analyze decisions and can be personalized to your own situation.

The important idea is to take note of a decision you make, write down an expected outcome of the decision and then look-back to see how your actual results compared with the expected outcome.

As a sales rep, this may be the biggest challenge of all. People by nature succumb to the “shiny object” phenomenon. You know what I’m referring to, where anything shiny distracts you from the important work you may be doing….

If you don’t believe me, do a time log of yourself. Look at how much time it costs you to “stop for just a minute and pick this or that up.” Or if you work in a centralized sales role, it’s no different than a few minutes spent to research why your cable bill was so high last month. Time wasted during precious selling hours.

Recently I heard a story about a CEO of a large medical device company who was in the field with a rep when the rep received a call to deliver some product to a customer. This task took his entire morning.

The CEO asked the rep how often this happens and he said he spends almost half of his time doing product deliveries because he views it as “being of service.” He went on to say that most of the other ~100 reps around the country like him feel the same and have a similar time allocation.

Seriously? That’s not being of service, that’s being a delivery person. FedEx and UPS have invested billions to fill that role.

How about spending your time analyzing the doctors market and offering some recommendations about how he may grow his business instead? Now that’s being of service and would be much more pleasing to the ears of the CEO.

Executives, Marketing and Operations all depend on the sales team to report back on what is happening in the market. The most effective reps listen, ask questions, follow-up and deliver feedback.

Communication is key here and so is active listening. Sometimes, clients don’t really know what they want, only that they want something different than what they currently have.

Seeking out these opportunities and bringing them back home to the corporate office are nuggets of pure gold for the enterprise.

As you accomplish tasks like time studies and feedback logs, you may begin to see patterns emerge of activities you enjoy, accomplish effectively and they result in a contribution to the enterprise. What will also become clear are the areas where you may not be so polished. Make a commitment to to seek help with these areas. Not in an attempt to overcome your own weaknesses, instead to search for someone in your group who may be strong where you are weak. Ask for help and you will receive it.